WASHINGTON -- History takes time. To understand the historic
decline of the Democratic Party I have found it useful to reach
back to a book I wrote in 1984, The Liberal Crack-Up. It
is a diagnosis of what was then the core philosophy of the
Democratic Party, liberalism, and a prognosis of its future. Doctor
Tyrrell was not optimistic, but history takes time.
Today the Democratic Party has lost both houses of Congress, the
presidency, many state offices it had controlled for at least two
generations. It is about to be outpaced throughout the federal
judiciary. The liberal crack-up began with the defeat of that
liberal fantastico, Jimmy Carter. It picked up steam during the
1990s, when the Democrats lost the House and the Senate and many
state offices -- and the media's legend endures that President Bill
Clinton is a political genius. His genius is in self-promotion. He
is a cunning huckster. But the liberal crack-up did not reach the
point of no return until November 2, 2004. Then on that glad and
glorious morn, that reductio ad absurdum of a liberal
presidential candidate, Jean-François Kerry, the Democratic
elites, and all the liberals in the media beheld Victory.
It was to be a return to their vicarious lives as Kennedys!,
Roosevelts!, Progressives!
Alas, by November 3 their delusions became very difficult to
maintain. Sure there are many who still think they won. Doubtless
Jean-François, his balmy wife, and many in his entourage
still feel as morally and intellectually superior as they did in
the expectant hours of November 2. Yet clear-headed students of
politics today recognize that the Democratic Party has suffered a
catastrophic defeat. Some, such as Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago
and Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, are politely suggesting that
their party is in need of a philosophy transplant, something less
narcissistic, less out-of-this world, than the troubled philosophy
that since the 1960s has been at its core, namely, liberalism.
Some will say liberalism was the very core of the Democrats'
beloved New Deal, but they err. The liberalism of the New Deal was
leavened with urban machine politics, Southern conservatism, and
that wild and woolly philosophical hybrid, western populism. The
liberalism that became rampant in the Democratic Party beginning in
the late 1960s drove out all other intellectual impulses. Yes, a
poseur such as Jimmy Carter might make a feint towards fiscal
conservatism, but he could not resist his education lobby, his
environmentalists, or his "minority rights" careerists. And he was
most in his element lecturing Americans on their "inordinate fear
of Communism" and their "malaise." Today he is just another
"blame-America-first" megalomaniac.
Boy Clinton was not a lot different. His 1992 big spending plans
(he called it "infrastructure") and healthcare colossus were kept
in check by the country's growing conservatism manifested most
inescapably in the Republican ascendancy on Capitol Hill in 1994.
His vaunted balanced budget was achieved at least in part by his
niggardliness toward the military. His whole egotistic lifestyle
was late-twentieth century liberalism replete with zoo sex in the
office and hand-holding with visiting preachers and therapists.
Then came Al Gore and after that the football-throwing, snow
boarding, wind-surfing, bungee-jumping fantasist whose
self-important huffiness over being called "French-looking" made
teasing him such a delight.
At the heart of the liberal crack-up, which I first diagnosed in
1984, is the impulse to politicize everything from food to sex to
happenstance -- and to moralize. The liberal of the liberal
crack-up is a free-floating moralizer. Such liberals are also
dramatists of the most adolescent variety. No human experience is
beyond their melodrama. There is no misfortune that they will not
exploit for votes. Their politics is built on a world of extremes.
The conservatism of President George W. Bush, a conservatism that
has been governing America for most of the past 24 years, remains
to these liberals shocking, dangerous, or "extremist," as they
say.
The liberalism of the liberal crack-up is what is "extremist."
Even a sensible idea or a fine principle is exaggerated to the
point that it becomes preposterous and untenable. Thus in the last
election the perfectly sensible and tolerant solution for stable
homosexual couples' legal difficulties, namely, civil unions, was
not sufficient. No conscientious liberal of 2004 will be content
until the Nation adopts homosexual marriage. Nor will the good
liberal accept such limitations on abortion as parental consent for
minors. Naturally the good liberal will only accept the most
extreme criticism of the Iraqi war. The good liberal increasingly
sees politics as a realm dominated by conspiracies and lies. The
inflamed drama of liberal politics has become too much for ordinary
Americans to endure. The liberal crack-up is beyond therapy. It is
history.
topics:
Education, Abortion, Environment, Military, Iraq, NATO, Communism, Conservatism, Unions
